a better human
race. That's the greatest battle she can fight, my dear young lady, and
when----"

"Well," rejoined Ramsey with eyes frankly tearful, "she fights it mighty
badly."

"Ah, a hundred times worse than you think. Yet we who presume to fight
the blunders of that battle must fight them unselfishly and to help her
win."

Old Joy groaned so approvingly that he turned to her.

"What do you think, old mammy?"

"Who, me? Lawd, I thinks mighty little an' I knows less. Yit one thing I
does know: Phyllis ain' gwine. She know' you cayn't make her white by
takin' her to whah it make' no odds ef she ain't white. Phyllis love'
folks. She love' de quality, she love' de crowd. White aw black aw
octoroom free niggeh, Phyllis gwine to choose de old Hayle home and de
great riveh--full o' steamboat'--sooneh'n any lan' whah de ain't mo'n
one 'oman to de mile. Phyllis ain't gwine."

The closing words faded to soliloquy. For every one stood up, and even
the old woman's attention was diverted to Watson's apprentice
approaching from the captain's room. On his way below for the doctor he
came, in the actor's behalf, to ask if he might bring up also Mrs.
Gilmore.

Assuredly he might. How was the patient?

"Very quiet," the boy hopefully replied. Whereupon madame begged leave
to repair at once to the sick-room, but neither of the Courteneys would
consent nor either of them allow the other to go. The steersman passed
on down.

From enviously watching him do so, "California" turned to the company
and in open abandonment of his amazing proposition said drolly that
never before had he failed, in so many ways "hand-running," to make
himself useful. He reseated Madame Hayle and would have set the daughter
beside her, but the mother bade Ramsey give Joy the chair and leaned
wearily on the old woman's shoulder. Both Courteneys urged their seats
on the girl, and when she would not accept while either of them stood
for her servant to sit, the grandfather left Hugh debating with her,
took "California's" arm, found other chairs a few paces away, and
engaged him in a gentle parley which any one might see was an appeal to
his sober second thought. It was Ned's shift up at the wheel, but the
change of watch was near; his partner stood at his elbow. Their gaze was
up a reach between the two most northern of those four groups of bluffs
whose mention even Ramsey was for the moment tired of, yet they studied
the three couples on the roof belo